Interface is fresh and fast, but iPad users get no love.

Google announced Tuesday morning the release of its own free YouTube app, now available immediately in the App Store. The launch comes just ahead of Apple's expected launch of iOS 6, which will no longer include the Apple-developed YouTube app for iPhone or iPad.

Built by YouTube engineers, the new app has an interface that is quite similar to other Google-developed apps for iOS—a sort of mix of iOS elements and UI elements from Google's websites. It also uses a sliding panel to allow access to settings and options "underneath" the main interface, similar to Facebook's iOS apps. Tap the "menu" icon on the top left, or swipe the entire main view to the right, and it slides over, revealing filtering categories along with the ability to sign in to your YouTube account and change settings.

Enlarge/ Swipe to the right to access YouTube's settings and filters (left). Videos play in a view similar to the YouTube mobile website (right).

The main view consists of "cards," similar again to Facebook's most recent iOS apps, or the new Pinterest app. Each card has a large widescreen preview image, with info about who uploaded the video and when it was uploaded along the top, and a title and view count along the bottom.

A magnifying glass icon in the top right lets you search for videos; search is quite responsive and fast. There are additional options to refine your search hidden behind a gear icon.

Enlarge/ The search interface quickly loads suggestions as you type (left). You can refine the search with options accessed from a "gear" icon (right).

Tapping any video "card" loads the video in a view similar to YouTube's mobile Web interface. The video loads and plays at the top, with a scrollable information view at the bottom. You can choose to show "suggested" similar videos or comments in this view.

The app generally only works in vertical mode, but you can switch to landscape while watching a video, which switches to a full-screen display. Tapping a playing video in either orientation brings up a control overlay, with a play/pause button, timeline scrubber, "thumbs up" and "thumbs down" buttons, Airplay button, a somewhat redundant "full-screen" button, and a share button. Tapping the share button brings up options to "Share," add to "Watch Later," "Favorites," or "Playlist," and to flag as inappropriate content. Tapping Share lets you post the video to Google+, Facebook, and Twitter; send a link via e-mail or message; or copy the link to the clipboard.

Enlarge/ Full-screen viewing is done in landscape orientation. Control overlays offer additional options, including AirPlay support and sharing options.

Overall, the interface is fast and responsive. Compared to Apple's YouTube app, which really hasn't changed much since it was introduced years ago, it looks fresh and crisp. Given the lack of attention Apple has given the original YouTube app, users are arguably better off with Google taking over responsibility for the iOS YouTube experience.

The only serious gripe I have is that the app doesn't have a native iPad interface. Going to the website works fine, so it's not as though you'd actually have to suffer with a pixel-doubled iPhone interface if you don't want to. But the organization and options are different, and to be frank, I prefer the way the iOS app filters content for browsing. Google is working on an iPad-optimized interface for a future update, which will hopefully come sooner rather than later.

UPDATE: Reader Will Johansson let us know that Google's app also doesn't appear to support subtitles or captions, which is a real usability concern for deaf users.

UPDATE 2: Googler Matt McLernon told Ars via e-mail that closed captioning can in fact be accessed on supported videos by using fullscreen mode, which adds a "CC" button to the overlay controls.

You can get the new iOS YouTube app from the iOS App Store. Note that searching for "youtube" didn't list Google's own app anywhere near the top of search results Tuesday morning.

Promoted Comments

My biggest issue with this app is that it does not support AirPlay. If you try to enable AirPlay, the app tells you to use mirroring. First of all, not all iOS devices that support AirPlay have mirroring support. Secondly, when mirroring, the video does not fill the tv screen.